JON GARELICK

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Natraj and friends expand their neighborhoods Nobody likes labels — except maybe critics. And we all want to live by Duke Ellington's measure of quality: beyond category. Beyond names and borders, that is, in a post-racial society. And yet, the word "fusion" — at least in music — has a pejorative connotation, suggesting bland pastiche and commercial opportunism.

Carmen Consoli, Live at Regattabar, January 7, 2010 How Italian was the crowd at Carmen Consoli's sold-out Regattabar show? The language was everywhere. The couple from Methuen sharing our table were 50 percent, and the Italian husband estimated the room at 90 percent. (I was guessing 85.)

Mutable Music (2010) A composer who writes a 16-minute big-band piece based on "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" isn't going for subtlety — but then, he probably wouldn't appear nude and painted green on his CD cover, either.

Watt/ECM (2009) It's possible to play Christmas carols with humor but not mockery. So, yes, there's a bit of an eggnog buzz in the wah-wah muted horns of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," and a soca lilt to "Jingle Bells." But in this case, "humor" means serious-minded but without solemnity or sentimentality.

ABKCO (2009) This live 1969 Madison Square Garden set was released at the band's peak, following Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed , preceding Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street , and recorded a week before the disaster at Altamont.

Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux sing jazz's many strains Full-length written histories of jazz can be a slog. Especially since "the story of jazz" (as critic Marshall Stearns titled his 1956 tome) only gets longer and more complicated. Personally, on these prose-narrative trips along the New Orleans–New York axis of musical development, I usually bog down somewhere outside Chicago.

Self-released (2009) Boston singer-songwriter Miss Tess has always had the pipes and the taste to carry off her various ventures into country, blues, and multi-hued swing, but Darling, Oh Darling underlines her overall sound.

Ran Blake's Pawnbroker, Sofia Koutsovitis's pan-American roots Film noir has been a running theme in composer/pianist Ran Blake's work since the beginning of his career — his very first album, The Newest Sound Around (RCA, 1962), with singer Jeanne Lee, began with David Raskin's theme to Otto Preminger's Laura .

Jeremy Udden’s rocky jazz path In his Village Voice review of Jeremy Udden’s Plainville (Fresh Sound New Talent), Jim Macnie recalled how a friend of his tried to file it as “jazz for Wilco fans.” As Macnie explained, that’s not the whole story with Udden or Plainville , but it’s not a bad starting point.

DafnisonMusic (2009) Prieto is one of the supermen drummers of contemporary jazz — Cuban-born, fluent in all idioms, a multitude of patterns flowing through him and into his hands and feet at any given point.